page_title: West Ham United F.C. supporters
section_title: Racism, violence and hooliganism
hierarchical_section_title: West Ham United F.C. supporters / Racism, violence and hooliganism
caption_attribution_description: English: T Shirt produced for West Ham's UEFA Cup tie with Palermo, 2006
context_page_description: West Ham United F.C. supporters are the followers of the London-based West Ham United Football Club, who were founded as Thames Ironworks in 1895. There are 700,000 fans on the club's database and over 2,300,000 likes on Facebook. The club's website is in the top ten most visited websites for English football clubs by people in the USA. Their fans are also associated with a once-notorious hooligan element and have long-standing rivalries with several other clubs, most notably Millwall.
context_section_description: West Ham fans have a tradition of violence and hooliganism. Their former ground, Upton Park, has also witnessed racism amongst fans and here football hooliganism originated amongst bovver boys in the 1960s. Sympathisers of the National Front have handed out National Front leaflets outside Upton Park particularly following the launch of the National Front youth newspaper 'Bulldog' in 1977, and have successfully sold club memorabilia carrying 'NF' slogans and motifs.
  The origins of West Ham's links with organised football-related violence started in the 1960s with the establishment of The Mile End Mob (named after a particularly tough area of the East End of London).
  During the 1970s and 1980s (the main era for organised football-related violence) West Ham gained further notoriety for the levels of hooliganism in their fan base and antagonistic behaviour towards both their own and rival fans, and the police. During the 1970s in particular, rival groups of West Ham fans from neighbouring areas (most often groups from the districts of Barking & Dagenham) often fought each other at games.
  In 1980 the club were forced to play their Cup Winners Cup game against Castilla behind closed doors to an empty ground after fans rioted at the away leg of the tie in the Bernabeu. In 1985 five fans were stabbed on a cross-channel ferry to France after fighting involving fans of West Ham, Manchester United and Everton.
  In 2006, twenty West Ham fans appeared in an Italian court following their arrest after fights with rival supporters in Sicily before and after West Ham's game against Palermo in the away leg of their 2006–07 UEFA Cup game. At the home leg fans had bought T-shirts bearing the slogan "The Mafia" – a reference to Sicily being the home of the Cosa Nostra. This was seen as antagonistic by Palermo fans. Six West Ham fans, six police officers and five locals suffered minor injuries in fighting in Sicily. Rival fans threw bottles and chairs in the city's Teatro Massimo district. 500 people were involved in the brawl and police officers were attacked. It took police in riot gear more than an hour to bring the violence under control. An eyewitness said, "West Ham fans behaved like animals, roaming the streets, bottles in hand searching for anyone to fight". More than 2,500 West Ham fans travelled to Palermo for the game.
caption: T-shirt with Mafia slogan
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